Page 14 of His to Take

You would never think they’d ever turned into anything like a wolf, they looked too sweet and innocent. The little boy was shy and hid in one of the women’s lap, but Ann could see he had dark brown hair and tanned looking skin.

“This is Ricardo, my grandson,” the woman on the left said. “I’m May, and this is my sister Kay.”

They all said their names and then settled down. John pulled out some extra MREs and offered them to the women. “Thank you for asking us in.”

“It’s a strange world, now, isn’t it?” May said, her eyes on her grandson. “One day, Kay and Ed, my husband, were here with me while we watched Ricardo. Juan, his father, and Amber, his mother, were at work, and then… everything just went boom.”

“Yes, it was all quite traumatic, wasn’t it?” Mary said from her chair beside Ann.

“I’m glad we locked ourselves down there in the basement. We’ve heard stories from some of the others like us. It’s enough to make us go back down there in the bunker, I tell you,” Kay volunteered, her eyes on the wall. “Soldiers killing wolf families and taking those that are unafflicted away to be slaves. What kind of soldiers would attack us? I ask you. Foreigners, has to be.”

“Oh hush, Kay,” May admonished, her eyes disapproving as she looked at her sister. “You never did like foreigners.”

“Well, Juan got Amber pregnant when she was 17, didn’t he?” she shot back, but a stern glance from May soon shut her up.

Not the perfect family, then, Ann decided. Not if the sister was xenophobic and the grandson was obviously half Hispanic. Sadness overwhelmed her, and she took the bottle of water her mother gave her with a tired motion. Five years and countless deaths had passed since that horrible day, and people like Kay could still carry such prejudices.

Ann had grown up with a mixture of races, she’d gone to school with, been friends with, and had learned from the other students in her school. She’d never looked down on anyone because of skin color or how much money their parents had. Students were students, just people to her, and so were the other people in her life.

“I guess you all want to lie down. It’s late in the night, and we need to get Ricardo back to sleep,” May said and looked over at the empty space by the wall. “This was my husband’s clinic before the end came. There are exam rooms out there you can sleep in, if you want some privacy, or you can stay in here with us. It’s up to you.”

Ann went to stand up, ready to close her eyes and let the world slip away. She nodded at the other people as a way to say goodnight and made her way out of the larger room. It was dark in the hallway, but she felt along the wall until she found a doorknob. It turned easily, and Ann walked into the room. She could tell there were no windows, so she turned on her solar-powered flashlight and made her way to the exam table. The rubber mat was still on it, and though it wasn’t made to sleep on, it was wide enough to hold Ann, at least.

She unrolled her camp blanket and settled down onto the table. Another strange day, in a life that hadn’t stopped being strange since those many days ago. She stared up at the ceiling and saw that the tiles were discolored in the ultra-white of the LED light. She turned the light off, saving the batteries that were recharged by the sunlight during the day, and wondered why she’d locked the door behind her.

Was it to keep danger out? But what danger?

Rex, her brain told her. Rex was becoming a nuisance. Every night, he tried to get her to… touch him. Or kiss him, to go off to have sex with him. She’d insist that she wanted to wait until someone could marry them, then they could be a proper family, but he kept trying to persuade her.

Even last night, curled up in the darkness of a bank they’d found, he’d tried to get her to go off to one of the offices to “bang their brains out”, as he’d put it. He’d said it was the perfect place, with soft carpet, and a lot of privacy. They’d all put down their blankets in the bank vault, where it was quiet and safe, and he’d said they wouldn’t be heard if they went out to one of the offices.

She was too confused, upset even, by her continued dreams, to give him an honest reply. She knew waiting for marriage wasn’t the best excuse, especially when there was nobody around to make it official, but it was all she could think of. She’d loved him her whole life, but now she was starting to lose some of her infatuation. Now that he’d finally started to notice her, well, she hated to admit it, but she wished he’d go back to ignoring her.

It wasn’t just because of the dreams, though. His insistence on sex disturbed her most of the time. It was like that was all he wanted from her. He’d sometimes tell her he was on fire for her, or that he needed her. That he ached for her touch, and that only she could give him relief from the urges he had. She was a little flattered by it all, but she wondered if it was all a lie.

There was no love in his eyes when he said all of those things, only greedy need. She’d dreamed about him saying things like that, but now, well, she was learning quickly that sometimes fantasy was better than reality.

Ann sighed and rolled to her other side. At least the man in her dreams was honest about what he wanted. He didn’t couch it in sweet lies and pretty words. He was blunt, forward, and direct about what he wanted from her. Every part of her body she had to offer.

She knew by now that something strange was happening, that the continuation of the dreams wasn’t normal. With everything else that had happened in the world, and without a friend to talk about it with, well, Ann stayed quiet. It was her secret, and one she couldn’t talk about with her mother or father, and definitely not Rex.

Ann took another deep breath and put her arm under her head. It was a strange world they lived in now, and she had a feeling it was only going to get stranger.